The Pursuit of Happiness Big Box is live (All good things come in big boxes)
Update: The Big Box Edition of The Pursuit of Happiness and the Nostalgia expansion have launched on Kickstarter, and the campaign will run for 24 days. You may pledge just for the Big Box and the Nostalgia expansion, either standard or with Deluxe components, or, if you don't have the base game, you can go all-in, again either standard or Deluxe.
Our preview post below was published on November 7.
The Pursuit of Happiness is a 1-4 player worker placement game in which you go through various stages of a character's life: jobs, relationships, family, purchases and projects. The Kickstarter campaign on November 10 is for the Big Box edition that contains everything released for the game so far, plus a new expansion called Nostalgia.
In the solo mode of The Pursuit of Happiness, you set it up like a 2 player game and draw 3 life goals (instead of 2). On each turn, you will be placing your marker on various spots on the board to take the associated action. These actions are: Study, Play, Interact, Temp Job, Take Project, Spend, Get Job, Start Relationship, Overtime, and Rest. If at any time you have more than 3 jobs, partners or projects, you gain stress for the extra ones (and if you take too much stress, you die).
You will start with a number of resources: Knowledge, Influence, Creativity, and Money. When you place your marker on the Study, Play, Interact, or Temp Job spots, you gain the resource shown on that spot. When you visit the Overtime spot you gain extra markers that you can use in the following round but also gain stress. If you choose to Take a Project, you select one of the available Project cards to place in front of you, and can then take the actions shown on that card.
When you start a Relationship, you will select a partner card from the display and take the actions shown on the card in sequence (Dating, Relationship, Raise Family). Similar rules apply in the Get Job and Spend actions. To win, you have to fulfill all three goals that you drew at the beginning, and also gain at least 50 Long Term Happiness.
During the Kickstarter campaign, you will be able to get deluxe components for the game as well as the Holiday cards promo pack. The Nostalgia expansion introduces the Reminiscence deck which makes players pursue unfulfilled desires, dreams and aspirations of their past.